The missing factor: Filner's humanity

Last Sunday, the day before mediation talks would begin, Bob Filner had dinner with his two ex-wives.

Imagine that.

This mayor who for more than a month had been pilloried as a disgusting sexual harasser shared a meal with the two women who knew him best, who had divorced him but nevertheless still cared enough to comfort and counsel him on the eve of his capitulation to reality.

I have no idea what was discussed, what was eaten or where they met.

Neither woman — Barbara, mother of their two children, or Jane — agreed to speak with me last week.

Nevertheless, this last supper opens a window into what’s been missing from the Bob Filner story from beginning to resignation.

On July 10, the day Donna Frye rocked our world with an urgent SOS, a call for the mayor to resign immediately, I was reporting on Laura’s Law, a controversial lifeline for the mentally ill.

An editor telephoned that night to ask me to write a column on this mind-blowing condemnation from a progressive Democrat.

I had an hour to conjure up something.

Since then, I’ve been on the Filner beat every day, trying to contact whoever might know where things stood.

I connected with a few good sources, some of them close to Filner as he struggled to retain his slipping purchase on power. I had no doubt he was deserving of the outrage he was receiving. I believed Irene McCormack Jackson’s rendition of reality at City Hall.

All along, I knew things would end badly for Filner. He would be forced out of office. It was a dark prediction coming true.

In April, I filed a column about a couple, smart friends of ours in their 60s, who over dinner had discussed the recall of Filner.

The woman favored starting a recall campaign right away. Her husband, a well-known businessman, said the best strategy was to wait for Filner to blunder.

Filner conceded in his Friday speech that he had provided the weapon his enemies needed to finish him off.

What could not have been anticipated back in the spring was the delivery of the gun, cocked and loaded, by Filner’s closest allies, Democrats in good standing.

From Frye’s first news conference, it was obvious that Filner, in the absence of a brilliant political strategy, could not finish his term.

If he was to have any chance to survive the onslaught of squirmy allegations, he would have to persuade a critical mass of San Diegans that he is a multidimensional human being, not a libidinous whirling dervish. He would have to be perceived as a sick, but salvageable, mayor.

If it was in him, I thought, I could help let him try.

If only I could talk to him, in a bar or on a park bench or wherever he felt comfortable.

Not because I thought he shouldn’t resign but because he had an obligation, I thought, to speak honestly and openly about who he was.

Was he a true monster, as most of San Diego saw him, or a deeply troubled man worthy of condemnation and compassion?

Over the six weeks from hell, I called the mayor three times on his cellphone, leaving messages assuring him that I wasn’t interested in grilling him about specifics regarding the allegations.

What I wanted to know — and what I thought San Diego needed to know — was how he was holding up.

Are you sleeping? Are you following the news? What are you reading?

Are you talking to your two grandchildren? What are you saying to them over ice cream? Do you worry about what their friends might say to them?

Have you had a full physical? Do you worry about your mental health?

Do you know, for example, that you’re not suffering from some brain disorder like dementia that might explain some of your behavior toward some women?

The mayor, as you can guess, did not return my calls.

Once Filner was lawyered up and bunkered down, scheming to protect himself from bankruptcy, he was a dead joke walking.

Nothing, certainly not a by turns abject and fiery resignation speech, could regain the humanity he had conceded.

One of my critical readers wrote often to scold me for skimming the surface of this civic disaster.

“There is a human story and context behind every person’s misdeeds,” the clinical social worker wrote.